Chapter One

It is a small matter that brings them together. A story, untitled, unsigned, and
by all appearances incomplete, which the arresting officers in their haste have
neglected to record in the evidence manifest. A year ago, when the Lubyanka
thrummed with activity, when all of Moscow seemed to hold its breath at night
and every morning brought a new consignment of confiscated manuscripts to
Pavel’s desk, such a discovery would have hardly warranted a second look, let
alone this face-to-face meeting the archivist frankly dreads. Babel has
confessed: One story will not change that, nor will it save him. Still, Kutyrev
has insisted the matter be formally resolved, and since Pavel must now answer to
the ambitious young lieutenant, the question of authorship is to be settled, if
only for the record. Already an empty office upstairs has been reserved for the
purpose. In due course the appointed morning comes. Just as the first heavy
drops of rain are beginning to fall onto the dreary courtyard below, a guard
raps once on the door. Babel enters.

“I was about to make tea,” Pavel offers. On the bureau beside the window sit an
electric samovar, a serving tray, tea glasses and spoons, a darkly tarnished
tin, all left behind by the office’s previous occupant, absent now. Behind the
desk, where a row of pictures once hung, the plaster is noticeably lighter; only
nails remain. “Would you like to sit down?”

After a moment, as if Pavel’s voice has only now reached him, Babel nods, then
sits. He is unshaven. A bruise is fading under his right eye, and a faint film,
like dried salt, coats his lips. The wilted wings of his shirt collar lie
crookedly across the lapels of his wrinkled coat. And this finally, which Pavel
finds most disturbing: The writer’s glasses are gone. Somehow he had expected
Babel to appear as he once did in his dust-jacket pictures.

Pavel lifts the empty teapot from the samovar. “I’ll just get this filled.”

At first the young guard standing watch outside merely stares dully at the
teapot, as if he has never laid eyes on one before. He is at most twenty, with
the sleepy eyes of a peasant. Some displaced farmer’s son, perhaps, come to
Moscow to better himself. Whatever he is, the expression on his face is familiar
enough. “Water,” Pavel sighs, handing the teapot over. He might as well be back
at Kirov Academy, standing in front of a classroom of boys hardly younger than
this guard, reading aloud lines from Tolstoy. Ivan Ilych’s life had been most
simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible. Sons of want and privilege
alike, born in revolution’s shadow: It is his former students’ generation now
joining the numberless ranks already marching under the banner of collective
progress, while their former teachers reconcile themselves to silence. In the
two and a half years since his appointment to the special archives, where until
Kutyrev’s arrival this past May he was alone, Pavel has become painfully aware
of just how fortunate he once was, how blessed. He would give anything to be
standing before his students again, book in hand.

With the rain has come a kind of false twilight. All week the weather has been
like this. Sitting, Pavel pulls the brass chain of the desk lamp, which clatters
softly against the green glass shade. “I keep hoping we’ll get a little sun
soon,” he says, trying to hide his nervousness. It is not every day one meets a
writer of Babel’s eminence. He asks, “Are you hungry? I’m sure I could have
something sent up, if you’d like.”

“Thank you. No.”

A high, almost breathy voice: Babel will not even meet his eye. Pavel stares
openly at the bruise on Babel’s cheek, then looks away. The guard returns with
the teapot.

At the window again Pavel fills the samovar. Next door a telephone rings once,
is answered. A watery, pale light cups the rounded side of the warming samovar,
spilling over Pavel’s hands as he pries open the tin. Only a little tea remains,
the blackish, powdery leavings like a kind of sand he tips into the waiting
teapot. Tilting the tin toward the light, Pavel catches a glimpse of his own
blurred reflection in it. Then he returns to the desk.

“Might I ask a question, Comrade Inspector?”

“I’m not an inspector,” Pavel says quickly. “I work down in the archives.”
Leaning forward, he wipes the green cardboard of Babel’s file folder with his
fingers. A pink ribbon, neatly tied, holds the folder shut. “Actually,” he adds,
“I used to be a teacher, believe it or not. I taught your stories.”

“My stories.”

“From Red Cavalry.” When one could teach them, Pavel thinks. When it was
acceptable. Safe. “Some of your later work as well. ‘Guy de Maupassant’ is a
personal favorite of mine.” The opening lines of Babel’s story, which he has
never tired of reading, return to Pavel:

* * *

In the winter of 1916 I found myself in St. Petersburg with a forged passport
and not a cent to my name. Alexey Kazantsev, a teacher of Russian literature,
took me into his house.

A teacher of Russian literature-the irony stings now.

Babel squints at the green folder with an expression of dull, somewhat dazed
perplexity, as if Pavel has conjured it up out of nothingness by some sleight of
hand. Then his dark eyes empty again.

“May I ask,” Babel says finally, “what day it is?”

“Tuesday.”

“Is it still June?”

“July.”

“Already-” At least that is what Pavel thinks he hears Babel murmur. Already. It
has been barely two months since Babel’s arrest, two months since the customary
unmarked car carried him at dawn through the enormous black gate of the
courtyard below. Has he lost his grip on time? Or perhaps, Pavel imagines, Babel
is simply, quietly stunned: that he could be brought down so fast, so
completely. That in only two months he could become the battered, cowed shell of
a man now sitting in this all but abandoned office. Pavel remembers his own
first months at the Lubyanka, themselves a stark revelation, though it is
obscene to compare his experience with Babel’s. He has not suffered one-tenth
the torment Babel has likely had inflicted on him: days without sleep or food or
water, threats, beatings.

Pavel says, “I’ve been asked-ordered-to clear up a discrepancy in your file.
It’s just a formality.”

“What sort of discrepancy?”

“A manuscript my supervisor happened upon while reviewing your file. A story.
Quite a remarkable story. There’s no record of it in the evidence manifest,
which means it can’t be officially attributed to anyone, yourself included.
Which means, officially speaking”-Pavel shrugs uncomfortably-“it doesn’t exist.
As I said, it’s just a formality. If you could perhaps take a look, tell me if
you recognize it. Can you read without your glasses?”

“Barely. I was told they would be returned to me,” Babel says. “If I
cooperated.”

Cooperated. Confessed, he means-and in doing so, likely implicated others.
Nowadays one cannot simply confess, one must also denounce. Acquaintances,
colleagues, friends, even one’s own family. Whom, if anyone, has Babel drawn
into the net that has now fallen over his life? Eisenstein perhaps, Ehrenburg?
Pasternak? A man of Babel’s prominence would be expected to name others at least
as well-known as himself.

I spent my mornings hanging around the morgues and police stations.

The line, another from “Guy de Maupassant,” echoes through Pavel’s brain as he
walks once more to the window, where the samovar has begun to boil. Steam
shimmers on the glass. “I’m afraid we’ll have to make do without sugar,” he
apologizes, filling the teapot. A sedan is just then pulling into a parking
space in the courtyard below, wipers briskly slapping away rain. The wipers
cease, the driver’s door swings open. An umbrella emerges, blooms: a black
peony. Morgues and police stations, Pavel things-that is what this age will be
remembered for, that is our legacy. “Sugar?” Babel asks. As if the word were new
to him.

“For the tea.”

Babel is silent.

“I could send for some,” Pavel offers, though the prospect of facing the young
guard again leaves him tired. No doubt it is also Kutyrev’s dreadful, pointless
errand that has left him disheartened. For months now the junior officer has
seized upon practically every opportunity to drive home his authority over
Pavel, like a dog lifting its leg on even the most neglected patch of garden,
marking its territory. More than once Pavel has come close to telling Kutyrev
that he needn’t bother. He is welcome to the archives, right down to the last
folder. Pavel hands Babel his tea glass. “Mind, it’s hot.”

Babel holds the steaming glass of watery tea near his chest. “You were a
teacher,” he says after a time.

“Of literature, yes.”

“Literature.” Spoken without irony, without bitterness. He straightens slightly
in his chair. Perhaps, Pavel thinks, the tea has revived him. “Did you enjoy
teaching?” Babel asks.

“Very much,” says Pavel.

Rain taps at the window. Absently Pavel brushes back his hair, feels something
hard. The partial husk of a seed comes away in his fingers: It must have fallen
from one of the lindens near his building as he walked to the bus stop this
morning. He lays it on the desktop.

“Your Red Cavalry stories,” he tells Babel, “they were always quite popular with
my students. Boys, you know. They tend to be drawn to war. Your stories
fascinated them.”

Twenty-nine volumes of Maupassant stood on the shelf above the desk. The sun
with its fingers of melting dissolution touched the morocco backs of the
books-the magnificent grave of the human heart.

He cannot get Babel’s story out of his head. He notices that the fingers of
Babel’s right hand, spread on his thigh, are twitching ever so slightly, as if a
faint current of electricity were coursing through them. Suddenly Pavel is
struck by the realization that the very lines from the story floating in his
brain once flowed from that hand, those fingers. He imagines the lucky few train
passengers who managed to catch a glimpse of Tolstoy, dying in that railroad
stationhouse in Astapovo, must have felt a similar sense of mingled awe and
disbelief.

From the corridor outside comes the faint rhythmic jingling of keys. Regulation
at the Lubyanka requires that guards with prisoners announce themselves-either
in just this manner or by clicking their tongues-so that no two prisoners ever
accidentally meet. An institution built brick by brick upon secrecy, a world
unto itself. Still, try as he might to avoid them, the stories have nevertheless
trickled down to Pavel, like water leaking from a poisoned well. Mandelstam,
weakened by months of abuse, muttering fragments from his own poems to the
guards who stormed his cell after he slashed his wrists with a razor. Pilnyak,
sobbing like a child, slumping against the cold cellar wall when the executioner
touched the pistol barrel to the back of his neck. Wait, wait.

Pavel asks, “Would you like more tea?” The writer’s fingers, he notices, have
stopped twitching.

“Yes.”

As Pavel is filling the writer’s glass, Babel says tentatively, “I was wondering
if I might be permitted to write a letter. To my wife.”

A little tea accidentally sloshes over the rim of the glass. “Sorry,” Pavel
says.

“Please. It would ease her mind.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Pavel says after a moment. The weariness that
has dogged him all morning suddenly presses on his heart. “If it were
permitted-” He sets the teapot down on the samovar with a clatter, nearly
spilling more tea. “I’m sorry, comrade.” The word-unforgivable, given the
circumstances-is out of his mouth before Pavel can stop himself. Comrade. He
adds nervously, “Understand, it’s not a matter of whether or not I’d like to
help you. I would. I’m married myself.”

He breaks off, looking down at the skin of oil floating on the surface of his
tea, which reminds him, quite inexplicably, of ice. The river in spring, the
dirty ice beneath Krymsky Bridge shearing off in chunks, carried away. He
remembers that afternoon in January before his wife, Elena, left for Yalta, when
they walked along the winter-black river beneath Lenin Hills. How she had told
him she could not wait until April, when the ice would finally melt. “I’m so
sick of winter. Sometimes I think how wonderful it would be to never have to
come back here.” At the station later, embracing, Elena had touched his ear with
her lips and whispered, “Come with me, Pasha. Please.” The rabbit collar of her
coat brushed Pavel’s neck, light as breath. Impossible, of course: They both
understood that Pavel could not leave Moscow just then, not without permission
from his supervisors. Still, she had asked, she had tried in her way.

Pavel takes a deep breath, then unties the pink ribbon and opens Babel’s folder.
In it, faceup, lies a loose sheaf of unlined paper covered in tight, neat
script: Babel’s unfinished manuscript-if indeed he is its author, as Pavel has
every reason to believe. Even incomplete, the writing here is as beautiful and
vivid as anything Pavel ever read. A treasure, perhaps among Babel’s finest
work. Pavel clears his throat. “I suppose we should get started,” he says. When
he looks up he sees that Babel has turned toward the window.

“Is it raining still?”

“A little, yes,” Pavel says.

A silence settles over them, which Pavel finds himself unexpectedly reluctant to
disturb. Then, almost tenderly, he asks Babel, “What is your wife’s name?”

“Antonina.”

Absently Babel lifts a finger to his mouth, thoughtfully rubs his lower lip. The
light from the window lies like a dusting of snow on the shoulders of his coat,
which doubtless he has slept in since his arrest. The full-lipped, almost
sensuous mouth, those dark eyes, the high wide dome of a forehead with its
single pronounced worry line: All at once Pavel is struck by the simple miracle
of this moment, which nothing in his life could have prepared him for. The
cooling samovar ticks like a metronome, roughly in time to the pulse Pavel can
see beating faintly in Babel’s throat.

“I promised her we would see each other again,” Babel says. “Will they let her
visit me, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t want my last words to her to be a lie.”

“Of course not.” Come with me, Pasha. Please. To which Pavel had replied: I will
see you soon. His last words to Elena. The memory is enough to drive Pavel from
his chair-he cannot face Babel. At the bureau he sets down his tea glass, then
thinks, I wish I had gotten on that train.

As if picking up on this, Babel asks, “How did your wife die?”

“She was on her way to Yalta. The train derailed.”

“An accident.”

“The police suspect it may have been sabotage. Something laid across the
tracks.” Pavel must gather himself before continuing. “From what I was told, she
was thrown from the carriage when it broke apart.” A pumpkin, Pavel thinks: The
image has stayed with him all these long terrible months, the line of wrecked
carriages split innocently open like pumpkins on the snow. It is easier to
envision this than to confront the images Pavel has repeatedly driven from his
mind. Elena spilled out in that field; Elena in the back of a truck, wrapped in
a sheet; Elena at the mouth of the crematorium, the tray beneath her trembling
on its casters as the morgue attendant pushed her into the fire.

The long-awaited exhibition will feature artifacts, stories and perspective on the historical role of brewing in Colorado's fortunes, from Adolph Coors' first experiments to (relative) upstarts and current titans such as New Belgium Brewing.